Photograph of Henry Longfellow, head and shoulders, almost profile left, his right hand by his left upper arm.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82) was an American poet and the author of many works including Hyperion (1839) and The Song of Hiawatha (1855). In 1868 he visited Tennyson on the Isle of Wight. Tennyson took his guest to be photographed by Cameron, commenting: ‘You will have to do whatever she tells you. I will come back soon and see what is left of you’.

Text adapted from Roger Fenton – Julia Margaret Cameron: Early British photographs from the Royal Collection, London, 2010